California Secretary for Natural Resources John Laird met with the U-T Editorial Board last week to discuss the drought and other water-related topics. Here is an edited transcript of the interview.

Q: Why don’t we start with an update on the drought and where California stands, and what challenges are ahead.

A: The thing about the drought that’s interesting for the general public and even a lot of stakeholders, is they are two, three or four weeks behind the severity of this. You look at the benchmarks — a year ago January we had zero fires of any substance that Cal Fire had to deal with. This year it was 473. If you look at the snowpack, which is the water source for 25 million Californians, after it melts it flows, and (the) January measurement was 7 percent of what we needed. Right now, even with a few storms, we’re back to where we were in 1977, which was (the worst drought on record). And the water project for the first time in its 54-year history is down to zero percent allocation. If you looked at just the flows and the things going on, they’re at such a historic level that the governor’s state of emergency in January was really important to give him powers because you’re always in the water system balancing interest, keeping salt in the San Francisco Bay and the estuary flows …. Fish are obviously a part of that, being able to deliver water, and if we released what we normally had to release in February and March, we would have released almost every amount of extra water we have. So the state of emergency allowed us to balance those interests and recalibrate them down. There are some people convinced that if they make a strong economic argument as to their (needs) that somehow we have water somewhere that we can produce. There is a disconnect from the fact that this is not a man-made drought. This is really significant. In 2003 you had the worst fire in the history of California. (Initially) we staff up Cal Fire for fire season about June 1st. (As of March 31) in the San Diego area, we will be staffed as we normally would June 1st, which is unprecedented. We’re doing that in certain parts around the state so that we’re just ready.

Q: This is not the first drought we’ve had. It won’t be the last, (yet) it has not coalesced all of the various warring parties around some long-term plan. I don’t see any unity for any single plan.

A: The real issue is that we’re about 10 weeks into the severity of the drought. So we’ve been going through the part where people are getting used to it and the interests are still speaking. But I think it’s advanced it to the point that there is much more of a readiness or likeliness for some kind of act. It’s just that it has to settle out a little. When the rainy season, to the extent that there is one, passes, and it’s clear that this is where we are for six months, it ought to help move more to that area. But your question speaks to the complexity of California. Certain places that have done storage and certain that haven’t, all the different issues, 13 million Californians that are not on state water, statewide efforts to a bond, they have to be taken into account because of wells to 25 million that are on (state) water. It involves storage, conservation, recycling, stormwater capture, operational efficiency, watershed management in certain places, groundwater, the breadth of what’s out there. It is starting to move.